Café Inquiry (Online) – Artificial Intelligence – Are We Moving Too Fast?

This event is held online. (Click the button to join the Zoom meeting.)

A lot has happened in the AI world since we last discussed the topic. Most recently there has
been an open letter signed by more than 1000 people – including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak –
expressing concern about the safety of continued AI development and release. “AI systems with
human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” said the open
letter titled “Pause Giant AI Experiments”. At the next Café Inquiry, we will discuss these concerns and the advisability and feasibility of a temporary moratorium on AI development. There is a lot online about this topic.  Following are some suggested readings (and one video). From Science Alert: Tech Giants Call For a Pause in AI Experiments, Fearing “Profound Risks to Society”. Here is a link to the open letter referenced in the Science Alert article. In this article, a NYT columnist describes his disturbing encounter with the AI Bing search engine. Here is a PDF of the article. This article describes positive uses of AI. Here is a PDF of that article. Here is a short article about the release of ChatGPT-4. This article from The Atlantic discusses the use of AI by students to create essays and papers for their courses. Finally, here is a YouTube video that describes a technique for detecting AI generated text.

Café Inquiry starts with a short introduction of the day’s topic, followed by casual discussion.

This event is free and open to the public. Donations appreciated, but not expected.

Attendees are able to future propose topics which would align with Michigan Humanist’s purpose: from atheism, agnosticism, humanism, secularism, and freethinking to broader subjects in science and humanities, such as religion, philosophy, social issues, politics, evolution, morality, ethics, and psychology.

Café Inquiry (Grand Rapids) meets each month on the second and fourth Sunday.

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Michigan Humanists values the participation of all guests — requests for reasonable accommodation may be made by contacting the event host at least three days prior to the event.

Michigan Humanists expects all guests to engage in respectful discussion. Critiques on views and claims based on merit are allowed, but not attacks on individuals who hold other perspectives.

Any person engaging in disruptive behavior or harassment will be asked to leave, and may be banned from future events pending the severity of the action. Please speak to the event host or contact info@michiganhumanists.org if you feel these expectations are being violated.